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[Grandadrob]

And here comes Valentine’s Day, with jet lagged flowers. 

[Raybis]

They say every action has a consequence and I really wish they would think these so called eco friendly ideas through.

[diffwhine]

The one I always liked (and was told to me at Land Rover) was that a catalytic converter pushes more pollutants into the atmosphere in the manufacturing process than it can ever feasibly remove through its operating life...

[Grandadrob]

Ah, that’s the usual cherry picking of facts. If you seriously analysed any of these so called green solutions you will find that actually they are not green at all. But we don’t want to talk about that bit.

[Genem]

I'm sure its all utter nonsense, none of these changes have any value, its all a con. We should abolish all these stupid rules and regulations, go back to emptying our waste onto the street and burning coal. Bring back lead water pipes, chalk in the milk and lets get those kids back up the chimneys too, most of them don't enjoy school anyway. 



 

[w3526602]

There are videos showing dairy farmers taking their containers of milk out in the fields and dumping it.

Hi

That happened in UK many years ago ... sorry, I cant remember exactly when.

The following year, that land produces a record crop of grass.

I have read that an acre of land can produce 27 tons of bracken ... which is not good as animal feed, but surely it can be converted into heat?  On the other hand, it is reputed to be calcegenic (sp?), so maybe not a good idea to ramble through ... and it kills horses, although it takes a few years. I lost two horses, presumed due to bracken poisoning.

So turn pigs out onto bracken infested land, let them dig up the roots ... eat them before the bracken kills them.

602

[mrutty]

Yeap the 'green' lie is hitting farmers hard. They swapped out all the 'bad' chemicals in fence posts about 6 years ago and replaced with with 'better, greener' ones. Now I rent my field to nextdoor, part of the deal is he maintains the fences. He refenced a 20+yearside, now I know they were quality posts as they were dropped off on my drive, I know they were put in correctly as I watched them go in from my office window. I have since watched each one of them fail. The old ones by the way I cut off the bottom rotted bits, repointed and use them on the chicken fences.

[Alan Drover]

Green = naive.

[ChrisJC]

I think green = well intentioned. However it's always derailed by lobby groups taking advantage of naive politicians and civil servants. So the result usually has unintended side effects which entirely negate the original benefit!

The wood-chip power station at Drax is a great example!

Chris.

[Worf]

The wood-chip power station at Drax is a great example!

Chris.

Absolutely. I was involved in promoting wood pellet sales for a timber merchant, who thought it would be a good idea to set up a small plant to make use of waste sawdust by turning it into pellets to sell locally. He would collect the sawdust as a "backload" from customers who he delivered timber to in the local area. Thoroughly proper green idea for local recycling . He set up a very expensive plant and even won an award for local enterprise. Pellets were sold to local schools, prisons, council offices etc and private buyers who had installed pellet boilers.

However, within 2 years, he was being massively undercut by the "big boys", importing the stuff from half way round the world on oil burning ships, from plantations specially planted to grow the stuff (at who knows what cost to the environment). A good idea, hijacked for nothing but greed. His plant had to close, and he lost a lot of money and people lost their jobs.

As for Drax: https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/10/11/draxs-selby-plant-is-the-uks-biggest-co2-emitter/

Don't talk to me about "green" 

[Rog-from-Bix]

Absolutely. I was involved in promoting wood pellet sales for a timber merchant, who thought it would be a good idea to set up a small plant to make use of waste sawdust by turning it into pellets to sell locally. He would collect the sawdust as a "backload" from customers who he delivered timber to in the local area. Thoroughly proper green idea for local recycling . He set up a very expensive plant and even won an award for local enterprise. Pellets were sold to local schools, prisons, council offices etc and private buyers who had installed pellet boilers.

However, within 2 years, he was being massively undercut by the "big boys", importing the stuff from half way round the world on oil burning ships, from plantations specially planted to grow the stuff (at who knows what cost to the environment). A good idea, hijacked for nothing but greed. His plant had to close, and he lost a lot of money and people lost their jobs.

As for Drax: https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/10/11/draxs-selby-plant-is-the-uks-biggest-co2-emitter/

Don't talk to me about "green" 

drax produces 6 odd percent of the UKs electricity and can do that 24 hours a day 365 days a year so it is going to produce co2 what do we do shut it and risk black outs ? no matter how green we wish to be producing no co2 is unlikely may be it would be better if drax burned coal and they found a way to stop the nasties getting on to the atmosphere.   

[Worf]

Drax has had more than £850m in subsidies to burn wood, and it actually produces more CO2 than it did on coal, but is somehow offset by planting more trees.
Just think, if that money had been spent on clean coal technology, we could have been self sufficient for centuries (which is probably about long enough to get fusion power to work)

[Wittsend]

..... Drax, a big big mistake which will go down as such in history 
Sat over 400 years of coal that can be made to burn with low emissions with great efficiency.

Can't do much about it, but I'll die knowing I was right.

 

[gatekrash]

They say that it will encourage a switch to "green" HVO, but that will be taxed at exactly the same rate as derv 
And HVO is more expensive anyway!

Indeed, and HVO is ridiculously difficult to get hold of. You can get it delivered in 205 litre drums, or 1000l IBC's which need their own bunded store, but you can't get it at a pump. Apparently a version of it is used in the aviation industry as a "green" fuel, it's used in bulk which means supply for other users is virtually non-existent.

It's a hot topic on the inland waterway forums, because a lot of us with canal boats actually want to move to HVO as it doesn't suffer from diesel bug and will happily sit in a tank for years without absorbing moisture like dino diesel, but you can't buy it in any easily usable form, I suspect the construction industry will face the same problem.

Never let a lack of infrastructure stop you from forcing a change onto the public if there's a tax to collect !

[Genem]

^^^^ My red diesel supplier is reacting to the market and increasing its ability to supply HVO. I noted that one of the tanks on the delivery truck was HVO during our last delivery. The vehicle was carrying "Red", Kero and HVO.

Luckily for us "Red" will still be allowed for domestic power, we use it in the Genny, together with a bank of Solar panels , a pile of 24x2v "traction" batteries that make up a 48v storage and the clever box that controls it all, sends 240v to the house and turns on the genny if the battery is getting too low.